Back to cover page Phil Hammond is a GP, and a lecturer in communication skills at Bristol medical school. He is half of the comedy duo Struck Off and Die, and presenter of BBC Two's Trust Me, I'm a Doctor. Deadpan and bizarre, his columns liven up The Independent, Private Eye and Esquire. He is available on phammond@ cix.compulink.co.uk Mark Porter is a general practitioner (GP) in Stroud, where he does 20 hours a week. Charm incarnate, he is also medical columnist for the Radio Times, Sunday Mirror and Classic FM, The Magazine. He is resident doctor on Radio 2's Jimmy Young Programme, Classic FM, and BBC One's Watchdog series.

Mark Porter and Phil Hammond, two likely lads whose charisma and comic talent burst out of medical school on to our TV screens, tell Life about their medical training

Where did you go? What did you do?
Mark: University College, London for two years, then on to Westminster, which amalgamated with Charing Cross Hospital the year I left. Getting into medicine at all was a close run thing, I was accepted through clearing at my second attempt.

Phil: Three years at Girton College Cambridge, three years at St Thomas's Hospital in London. Allegedly to study medicine, although I always found that distractions abounded - Girton was 70% women in 1981. At St Thomas's I developed an allergy to masons and an exhibitionist's desire to shock.

Was it a waste of time?
Mark: Absolutely not - they were the best years of my life.

Phil: Emphatically not. The trick was to recognise the curriculum need not interfere with uncontrolled hedonism. There is time to develop interests outside medicine. For me it was writing and performing, which have since become my main source of income. Medicine feels like a hobby now.

Did you get any inspired teaching?
Mark: Quite a bit in fact. I was going to name the tutor who inspired me the most, but then I found out he's just been done for fondling male patients which was rather disturbing.

Phil: I have vague memories of professors who got triple firsts in 1897, showering spittle over incomprehensible overheads of a squid axon... inspired lunacy, more like.

How rebellious were you?Who did you rebel against?
Mark: My rebellion found three targets. The local traffic warden; my flatmate - a communist barrister, looking for trouble - and the pathology department who needed to get a life. Otherwise I was a model student.

Phil: Cambridge was so divorced from reality, I was never quite sure what to rebel against - doddery academics and spoilt brats? There was plenty to laugh at but none of it seemed to warrant revolt. My tutors weren't malignant. Perhaps just a bit misguided.

In the clinical part of my training there were times when I felt compelled to act. In my first week at St Thomas's, I was sent out of the operating theatre for not knowing the name of the nerve that ran next to the carotid artery. The consultant, and then the senior registrar, really laid into me. I was so angry when I got into the changing room, I nicked the consultant's brogues and wore them on every ward round for the next eight weeks.

I think by the end I had flipped completely. I left with a reference that said: "This student refuses to take medicine seriously. He does not deserve a St Thomas's house job." I did find some of it very hard to take seriously - not the medicine, but the posturing and the personality disorders, the bullying and the prejudice. I suppose it was rebellion of a sort, but not intelligent or controlled. If you can't rebel as a student, when can you? Just do it.

What's the best way to get famous at university?
Mark: Someone in my year managed to sleep with a stunning anatomy demonstrator. He was a hero from then on, but she was the brave one. Does writing for the BMJ count?

Phil: I only managed low grade infamy. I used to get hate mail: "You think you're funny, but you're sick all over. You could never be a doctor."

What's the best way to get famous in real life?
Mark: Keep your nose to the grindstone but watch out for opportunities - everyone gets at least one - and when you see it, grab it. If you stop to think of the consequences someone else will get there first. I was lucky to get mine early in my career.

Phil: Shoot John Lennon or today's equivalent - either of the Gallagher brothers should do it. Better still, don't try. If fame is your aim, you're destined for a shallow and miserable existence. Far better to do something that interests and excites you. If you get known because of it, then fine. If you don't, you have self-fulfilment which is far more rewarding than, say, being invited to Tony and Cherie's for cocktails.

Politically, were you earnest, ironic or apathetic?
Mark: Apathetic if I'm honest, although I did manage to become a BMA junior hospital doctors' representative. My boss at the time was an influential consultant and thought I would make a good politician. I wasn't about to contradict her at the time, but she was wrong.

Phil: As a student, oblivious. At St Thomas's, I remember looking out of the window and seeing a National Union of Students march over Westminster Bridge in aid of students' rights. I thought about going, but the bar was nearer. I couldn't help getting more political as a house officer. My horizons broadened. At Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, I met Tony Gardner (the other half of Struck Off and Die) and worked with a brilliant senior registrar called Pete Leopold. Pete used to rant about doctor's pay and conditions, and got me feeling quite militant. Then there was Ruth Gilbert - one of the leading lights in the junior doctors' movement - and the conversion to iconoclasm and subversion was complete.

Would you do anything differently, in hindsight?
Mark: I spent five years in hospital medicine and I often wish I'd stayed there.

Phil: No. I think I've got the best job in medicine. A bit of writing, a bit of performing, a bit of teaching, a bit of doctoring, a bit of broadcasting, and home most nights to bath the children. None of this was planned, but I took opportunities as they came up and it's all worked out.

Booze or books?
Mark: Steady consumption of the one, and frantic spells with the other.

Phil: Are you joking?

Idealist or cynic?
Mark: I still do on call.

Phil: I was your average cynical junior doctor, but coped with the bad bits by displacing all my emotions into satire. There's something hysterically funny about not knowing what you're doing with no one around to show you how. When Struck Off and Die got going, every nightmare became 10 minutes of material, so I didn't actually mind the bad bits. After a few years performing, I was earning more sending up medicine than doing it, and the guilt kicked in. In our idealistic moments, Tony and I thought that Struck Off and Die might publicise the absurdities of medical training and change things, but in truth we just made a few people laugh. In 1992, I decided one way I could improve the system was to get in there at the start, and I applied for a lecturing job at Birmingham University, teaching communication skills. After two years, I was voted teacher of the year by the students - or at least by the three who bothered to vote. It was, and still is, the only thing I've ever won in medicine and I'm mighty proud of it. When my idealism flags, I just finger my certificate.

Advice for generation X?
Mark: Never give up medicine whatever the temptation. It's the best job in the world and the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. If you leave because you want to find that out for yourself it may be difficult to get back in. If you do other things keep up some clinical work which is what makes doctors valuable and interesting contributors in other walks of life.

Phil:
You have got to reach on up
Never lose your soul
You have got to reach on up
Never lose control.

or on an empty stomach:

Swing it, shake it, move it, make it
Trust it, use it, prove it, groove it
(Repeat and fade).